“And if I decide I can’t do it?” she asked, gently disengaging her fingers from mine. “Which of the druid virgins will take my place?”
I felt the loss as if it was a blow. “There is only one who can be my goddess, and you are she. If you refuse, then I will retire from the position and allow Taranis to fill it with someone of his choosing.”
Her gaze shot to mine, startled. “But you’d die.”
“Yes.” I stood up and held out my hand for her.
She looked at it curiously for a moment before looking upward at me. “Are you saying you…love me?”
She made it so very easy. But damn and blast my conscience, I just couldn’t do it.
“I don’t know,” I told her, grabbing her hand and hauling her to her feet. “I like you very much. I like being with you, and talking to you. I want you physically quite badly, to the exclusion of all other thought. I want to share things that happen to me with you. I want to share my life with you. But it’s been so long since I’ve felt romantic love, I’m no longer certain if that’s it or if I’m just desperate.”
Her full-throated laugh made me smile with the sheer joy of hearing it. “Here you should be on your knees before me, telling me you love me above all else and that you’d be lost without me, and all you can say is that you’re not sure if what you’re feeling is love, or a mild case of lust.”
“It’s not mild in the least,” I said, brushing my thumb against her lower lip.
She sucked in her breath.
“Would it help if I did those things?”
“No.”
“Would it help if I kissed you?”
She swayed into my arms, just as I’d prayed she would. Her body was warm and soft and melted delightfully against me. “No. But I’ll let you do it anyway.”
“I don’t want you to let me do it,” I murmured, sliding my hands up the delicious curve of her hips to the underside of those magnificent breasts. “I want you to be a willing participant.”
“Mmmrowr!” she said, suddenly lunging at me. I wasn’t expecting full-frontal lunging and we both fell backward, across the blanket.
My forehead connected with hers with an audible “clunk!”
“Ow,” we said simultaneously.
Megan, who lay across my chest, rubbed her nose against mine and grinned. “Sorry. I just wanted to show you that I was very willing.”
“So I see.”
“Don’t you like aggression in a woman?” she asked, licking the corner of my mouth.
“It depends wholly on the woman. You have my full-fledged approval.”
“Oooh, does this mean I get to seduce you out of all sensible thought for a change?” She wiggled against me, her hips rubbing sinuously on mine.
My eyes came close to crossing. “Oh, yes! Seduce me! Please, if you have any mercy, seduce me!”
She laughed as she kissed me, pushing my hands, busily working their way under her shirt, back to the ground. “All right, but you have to let me do this my way.”
“This isn’t going to end with you demanding I call you Mistress Megan, is it?” I asked, delighted with the wicked glint to her eye.
“No, of course not.”
“Good. I don’t mind taking turns being the aggressor, but I am not a submissive man by nature.”
“It’s Mistress Sadistica,” she said, biting my lower lip.
I gawked at her for a moment before noticing the laughter in her eyes.
“Wench,” I said, relaxing as she kissed along my jaw.
“Devilishly handsome Irish rogue,” she countered, unbuttoning my shirt.
“Are we getting naked now?” I asked hopefully, helping her remove my shirt.
“I haven’t decided yet. I just like your chest, and want to see it in all its manly glory.”
“I like yours, too,” I pointed out. “I’d like to see it in all its feminine glory. In fact, I’d like it rubbing up against me.”
“This is supposed to be a kiss,” she reminded me, scattering light little kisses across my chest. “Not foreplay. Not sex.”
“But foreplay and sex are good.”
“Just a kiss. With your bare chest. You’ve earned a kiss with all your enlightened Oprah and Deepak awareness.”
When she squirmed on top of me, I grimaced and tried to shift her. “Imminent castration threatens.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She removed her knee from my groin, and moved slightly to the side.
“Perfect,” I said, clamping both hands around her ass, giving it a quick grope before nipping at her lower lip. “Resume your seduction, vixen.”
“I thought I was a wench.”
“ ‘Vixen’ has a nicer ring to it.”
“Such astuteness must be rewarded,” she said just before her lips descended upon mine.
It was a novel experience, allowing her to take the aggressor’s role. I’ve allowed women to take the lead before, but I’ve never been entirely comfortable with a woman in that position. Yet with Megan, I trusted her completely. I spent a few idle seconds wondering why that was so, when I’d known her such a short time, but then her tongue snaked its way into my mouth and I lost all ability to reason.
“Mmm,” she said. “You taste like…cinnamon? Cloves?”
“Gingerbread for the celebrations,” I answered, sliding my hands up her ribcage.
“No, you have to lie there and let me make you as mindless as you make me,” she ordered, pushing my hands away from where they badly wanted to touch her breasts.
“Dearling, that’ll take all of three seconds.”
“Mmm,” she repeated, one hand gently tweaking my nipple. It was a struggle to not react to the insistent urges my body was making of me, and she certainly wasn’t helping matters with her little wiggles, and kisses, and touches, and the amazingly sinuous dance her tongue did around mine, but I am nothing if not resolute. I knew this was important to her, that she needed to know that she could trust me, too. So despite every atom in my body demanding that I take her right there under the sun and gulls, bedewed by the occasional drift of sea spray, I told my instincts to take a holiday, and simply enjoyed the moment.
“All right,” she said, coming up from a kiss that came close to igniting my trousers. “This isn’t working. I’m just as mindless as ever, and you’re not even trying to seduce me. It’s your mouth, isn’t it? You have a magic mouth that drives women’s wits away?”
“It’s you,” I answered, sucking on her lower lip. “It’s me. It’s us together.”
“Oh, God, I am so lost,” she moaned, kissing me again with a passion that matched my own.
“Megan,” I said, nearly at the limit of what I could endure.
“I know. Me too. I’ve changed my mind, you were right. Let’s get naked. No! Wait! Someone could see us!” she said, rearing back to pull her shirt off over her head. “Oh, to hell with it. Yes! I want you, too. Right now, right here!”
Her hips wiggled against me in a manner that had me damn near bursting into song. I rolled her over, pinning her to the blanket. “I have sieged many a castle in my day, m’lady, but my attack on your keep will be the sweetest of all.”
She giggled as I kissed every inch of her face. “Oh, we’re doing medieval now? Okay, I can do that. I’ve been to a Renaissance Faire. Avast ye varlet! No quarter!”
“That was piratical, dearling, but we’ll go with it if you like. Lower your gangplanks and prepare to be boarded!”
“No, no, medieval is fine,” she said in a breathy voice, moaning as I sucked the sweet spot behind her ear. Her hands were frantic on my chest and back. The scent of her, the taste, the feeling of her fingers dancing about my flesh, drove me wild. “Tell me something medieval to say.”
I reared back as her hands slid lower, down to my fly. “How about ‘Is that a siege engine in your trousers, or are you just happy to see me?’ I’m more than happy to see you, but if you keep doing that, I just may expire of happiness.”
I helped her to remove my
trousers, then went mindless as she explored my penis with a thoroughness that I couldn’t help but commend.
“Condoms?” she asked, suddenly pulling back.
I lunged for my trousers, thanking my foresight that morning, and I almost lost control as she unrolled it onto me.
“Siege me!” she commanded, pulling me down onto the lush paradise of her body as she thrust her hips up.
I swear I saw stars as her body tightened around me when I sank into her. There was so much to do—her lips begged for kissing, her breasts demanded attention, and I had a deep, unexpected need to tell her what she meant to me—but the only thing I could do was drive myself into her body, reveling in her moans of passion and the look of bliss in her eyes.
She clawed at my back as she climaxed, and I gave in to my own body’s demand, oblivious to everything but the woman in my arms. If I had any doubts before, they were long since destroyed. She was right. She was good. She was the one woman I was meant to have.
“Dane?”
Something nipped my shoulder. “Hmm?”
“You fell asleep. Er…on top of me.”
Megan’s eyes, while still misted from our lovemaking, also bore a slightly amused look.
“Gods, so I did.” I rolled onto my side, pulling her back tight against my chest. “I’d make an excuse, but—”
“You’re a man. That’s pretty much all the excuse you can make.”
I smiled into her hair, and kissed the top of her head. Was there any woman so perfect as Megan?
“That was…wow. ‘Siege’ is a good word. Was I siegeworthy for you, too?” she asked.
I pulled her tighter, throwing a leg over her just in case she had thoughts of moving. “You wore me out, woman. I have no mind or body left. I’m just a man-shaped lump of exhausted, extremely sated flesh.”
“Ah. So if I did this, it wouldn’t do anything for you?”
She turned in my arms to face me, dipping her head down to suck one of my nipples into her mouth.
I damn near came off the blanket with the jolt that zapped through me. “Again? Right now? Before I’ve had my post-coital nap? Very well, you insatiable wench.”
I was about to kiss the breath right out of her when the hellhounds set up an unearthly baying.
“What the—Bloody hell!”
“Someone’s coming?” Megan swore under her breath, grabbing her clothing.
I muttered a few invectives of my own as I hurried into my trousers and shirt. She was just tidying her hair, and I was pulling my shoes back on, when a most unwelcome voice reached us.
“Down! I said down, you fiendish beasts! Know you who I am? Back, you beastly curs! Well, there you are. Quite a little love nest you have here,” Taranis said as he marched around the outcropping of rock that hid us from view. “Megan, my dear, I have come to rescue you from this uncouth knave, and his no doubt crude attempts to paw your lovely self. We have a bird sanctuary visit scheduled for this morning, if you remember.”
“What are you doing here, Taranis? What is this horrible place? And the stench, my God! Get those filthy beasts away from me. Good lord!” Fidencia lurched into view, clutching the arm of the druid named Roger. She straightened up, looking down her nose at us as she pointed at Megan. “What is that woman doing here with my husband?”
“Ex-husband,” I said, frowning. “Go away. Megan was about to seduce me a second time.”
“Dane!” Megan gasped, pinching the back of my arm in a meaningful way.
I remembered Oprah, Deepak, and that women were from Venus, and worked quickly to amend my error. “She was not about to seduce me a second time. Go away, regardless.”
“Just who do you think you are?” Fidencia asked, releasing the arm of the druid to march over to Megan. “An upstart American trying to take my husband from me! Have you no shame? Have you no mercy? How can you possibly even think of taking from my poor, innocent babe the love of a father?”
“Are you deaf, woman, or just living in your own reality?” I asked, moving over to protect Megan. “You left me. You walked right out on me, as you’ve done for the last fifteen hundred years, except this time you married someone else and got pregnant by him.
“I have accepted that all those centuries of putting up with your abuse, infidelities, and general indifference were a penance I had to pay in order to finally have Megan, but if you think I’m going to give her up for you, you’re madder than I thought. Go take your poor, innocent babe back to its rightful father, and work on having a real marriage for a change!”
“Come, my dear, I shall take you away from this unpleasantness.” Taranis smoothly insinuated himself between Megan and me. “There is no need for you to put up with the sort of abuse Dane generates.”
“Abuse! Me? You’re the one who bloody well brought her here,” I said, pointing to Fidencia.
“Remove that woman from the castle grounds,” Fidencia ordered, shoving the druid toward us.
“Over my dead body,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Roger.
He backed away, a distinctly worried look on his face.
“We shall go see the birds and think pleasant thoughts,” Taranis said, steering Megan past the seething Fidencia.
I wanted to knock him down, whack his blasted head right off his shoulders, but Megan had to make her own decision.
“No,” she said suddenly, stopping and twisting out of Taranis’s grip. She walked over to me, leveled me with a look that stripped away everything, and said simply, “You’d better be worth this.”
“I fervently hope you find me so,” I said.
She took my hand, turning to face the others. “I’m sorry, but the bird sanctuary visit will have to wait for another time. As for you,” she told Fidencia, who looked faintly startled, “you had your chance, and you chose to give him up. I’m not going to be so foolish. I, Megan St. Clair, hereby accept your proposal of marriage, Dane.”
“Actually, I don’t believe I’ve formally pro—”
“I hereby accept your proposal of marriage!” she said in a louder voice, giving me another intense look.
“Ah, yes. That proposal. Excellent. And I, Dane Hearne, lord of the hunt, lord of the fifth hour, lord of all sorts of other things that only Stewart can remember, do hereby accept you as my goddess. So mote it be.”
Eleven
M y heart was light, brimming with joy and happiness and everything good it could think of. Just the memory of our interlude in the cove was enough to keep a smile on my face for the next decade. Possibly two.
I beamed at my new bride-to-be as I escorted her back to the castle. “You will be happy. I swear to you that I will make you happy.”
Her gaze dropped from mine. “Er…yeah. We’ll talk about that later, shall we?”
That hesitation was a tiny little blot on my otherwise cloudless existence, but I didn’t let it worry me. I’d read in an issue of Cosmo that many brides had second thoughts. No doubt Megan had a case of bridal cold feet. I leered slightly to myself as I thought of the many ways I’d warm her up.
“What are you doing?” she asked, a puzzled look on her face.
“Leering slightly to myself. Why?”
“Oh. I thought you might have had a painful gas bubble or something. Um…Dane, are you sure we should leave them?”
She glanced back at where I had ordered the hellhounds to stand guard, effectively trapping Taranis, Fidencia, and the druid, allowing me to escort Megan back to the castle in privacy.
“Of course we should leave them. They interrupted us. They can stay there and think about that sin while I take you back home.”
“But, the poodles—”
“Hellhounds.”
“The hellhound poodles look a bit…I can’t believe I’m going to say this about a toy poodle…they look a bit menacing. Are you certain they won’t harm the others?”
“I’m fairly certain Fidencia is safe. She is a goddess, albeit no longer mine. They will respect that and not cross the line to v
iolence against her. Unfortunately, the same can be said about Taranis.”
“Wait a minute—he’s your boss, isn’t he? Wouldn’t your hell poodles know that?”
“Taranis has no authority in the Underworld,” I answered. “Thus he has no authority over them, although they would be hard pressed to tackle him. The druid, however…” I stopped and looked back.
“What about him?”
“He has no such protection.” I cupped my hands around my mouth, and called up the hellhounds. “Better to be safe, I suppose,” I told Megan as the poodles thundered down the beach to us, Taranis in hot pursuit. Fidencia wasn’t so much clinging to the arm of the druid as she was dragging him along in her wake; the look on her face was one that could strip paint.
Megan smiled at me, a gesture that warmed my blood down to my toes. I wanted to kiss her on the spot, but the hellhounds were almost to us. She glanced at the approaching people and asked quickly, “About this wedding…just how big is it going to be?”
“It is the culmination of the Beltane celebrations. Have I not told you of them? Tonight is the hunt, tomorrow the fire procession, and the following day is the wedding. Neo-druids from all over the UK are arriving to take part in the celebrations. The wedding vows are spoken twice—the first time is at the fire procession. The more formal version follows the next day, at the Beltane events. Did you not notice the tent city on the far pasture?”
Megan shook her head as she looked. “No, we went in the other direction this morning. Wow, that looks like a whole lot of people. How many do you normally get for the holiday?”
“You’d have to ask Stewart for the exact attendance numbers,” I answered as Taranis arrived, puffing slightly. “The hunt usually garners a hundred or so participants; double that will be here for the fire procession tomorrow. Possibly triple for the wedding. Ah, there you are, Taranis. A bit out of shape, are we?”
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